On Mars' atmospheric sputtering after MAVEN first two years

Abstract : Mars may have lost a significant part of its atmosphere into space along its history, in particular since the end of its internal dynamo, 4.1 Gyr ago. The sputtering of the atmosphere by precipitating planetary picked up ions accelerated by the solar wind is one of the processes that could have significantly contributed to this atmospheric escape. We here present a two years base analysis of MAVEN observation of the precipitating flux, in particular the dependency of the precipitating intensity with solar zenith angle and used this measurement to model the expected escape rate and exosphere induced by this precipitation.